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| About a year before Francis Scott Key wrote about the star-spangled banner in Baltimore, Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a different British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie, also known as the Battle of Put-in-Bay, the site of which is on the horizon beyond this streaming banner. If you squint you can make out Perry's Monument on the island in the distance. |
It was The Bicentennial. I was in the sixth grade, and had a book about the flags of the Revolutionary War. I must have made a presentation about it in class, because the teacher had me draw a figure (like a minuteman marching by, in profile) carrying a blank flag; she copied them, and everybody in the class colored them in, adding the period flag of choice. For some weeks, those figures marched around the top of the classroom walls like colorful crenelations. Those varied Revolutionary flags are having something of a moment these days; I know them all well. I’ve always liked our nation’s flags.
I was a Boy Scout, and for one season when I was in eighth grade, was a member of the color guard that raised the flag before the high school football game. In Alabama we were serious about football. For some decades now that team has been the Hoover High School Buccaneers, and there was a television series about them called Two-A-Days: Hoover High. But back in 1977-78, they were the Berry High School Buccaneers, and won the state championship. The crowds were huge, reaching ten thousand when we played hated rival Vestavia. Four of us Scouts raised the flag during the National Anthem while the crowd silently saluted, and we took down the flag after the game with simpler solemnity. We were serious about the flag, too.
Father Thompson, my predecessor and a Navy veteran, had a flag holder installed by the rectory door, and from May through November I put up the flag in the morning and take it down in the evening. The other months of the year the daylight is too little and the weather too harsh for the good of the flag. I have never accepted the new convention of leaving the flag up around the clock if there is some excuse for a light nearby. Sometimes, I forget to take it down because I’m busy with dinner, but I always do penance for that later when I double-lock the front door. We even bring it in if the weather gets bad.
We have a great tall flagpole in front of the school from which a larger flag flies on schooldays. Sometimes I notice the flag isn’t raised to the top, or the lanyard is too loose, and move to fix it myself. I keep an eye on the condition of the flag, too, so we get a new one before it gets too ratty.
A few years ago one of scouts installed a spiffy flagpole on the back field near the snack shack, and at the beginning of each season of munchkinball – spring baseball and fall soccer – some scouts raise the flag after I lead the munchkins in a prayer. I am afraid they do not demonstrate much experience with the ceremony or mechanics of flag-raising to my experienced, grumpy old eyes. And they always look at me in horror when I tell them they have to take the flag down at the end of the event, too.
Several times, the flag on the field or even the one in front of the school is left flying because somebody forgot. I take it down as respectfully as I can and take it to the rectory, where I hold it for ransom. I also keep the old, deteriorated flags until I can get them to our scouts, who helpfully will dispose of them correctly and respectfully.
Once, when I was retrieving a neglected flag, I laughed at myself, thinking, Who would expect me to be serious about the ordinary thing that re-presents something extraordinary and important, making tangible something so large as to be difficult to grasp?
Yes, the flag, our nation’s flag, is a sacramental, not of God or Christ or salvation, as we ordinarily use the term, but of our whole nation, history, hope, population and all. It gives all of us and each of us an opportunity to express the respect and affection we owe our patria, our homeland that nurtures and protects us. It is a country that is good because it is ours, as are all counties, but moreover, it is good because it is the greatest nation ever devised in its governance and guarantees of life and liberty.
The founders, the fighters, the families that strove and established her; the leaders and the ones who served in ways martial and domestic; the conflicts recognized and resolved with mutual respect, the process that provides hope that good will prevail over preference, even of the many; all of this flutters gently in the summer breeze in a single, simple object immediately recognized over all the world for almost two and a half centuries. We should all be serious about the flag, to nurture and express our seriousness about our nation.
God direct and defend the United States of America! Blessings to you this Independence Day.
Monsignor Smith
